Abstract: Galerie Schmela was one of the most important art galleries in Germany in the postwar period. Through a prescient program
of exhibitions, founder Alfred Schmela introduced and promoted innovative European and American artists, such as Joseph Beuys,
Arman, Gerhard Richter, the group ZERO (Otto Piene, Günther Uecker, Heinz Mack), Hans Haacke, Christo, Lucio Fontana, Robert
Indiana, Yves Klein, Gordon Matta-Clark, Jean Tinguely, Richard Tuttle, and numerous others. Mainly concentrated on the 1950s
through the 1970s, the Galerie Schmela records include: correspondence with artists and clients; gallery financial records;
vintage photographic documentation of installations, gallery openings, and artworks; and extensive files of printed ephemera,
posters, and press clippings.

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Language: Collection material is predominantly in
German, with some material in
English or
French

Biographical / Historical Note

When German art dealer Alfred Schmela opened a gallery devoted to contemporary art in Düsseldorf in 1957, the moment was propitious.
The industrial Ruhr area in which the gallery was located had especially benefited from the prosperity of the postwar "Economic
Miracle" coming out of the policies of the Adenauer government and the American Marshall Plan. The new climate of wealth encouraged
art collecting. With Germany divided and decentralized after the war, Düsseldorf and Cologne were becoming significant and
influential art centers. The Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen and municipal exhibition venues, Kunsthalle and Kunstverein
in both cities, opened their doors to contemporary art. At the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Joseph Beuys attracted and influenced
students and independent artists from the time of his appointment as professor of sculpture in 1961 until well into the 1970s.

Schmela's first gallery was in a small shop in the Hunsrückenstrasse 16-18, which opened with an inaugural exhibition of Yves
Klein on May 31, 1957. The gallery operated at this location until December 1966, and in January 1967 moved temporarily to
the Schmela family's apartment. Also in 1967, Schmela, together with Hein Stünke, Rudolf Zwirner, and several other local
art dealers, co-founded the Verein progressiver deutscher Kunsthändler (Association of Progressive German Art Dealers), which
took part in its first annual art fair, the Kölner Kunstmarkt. Schmela resigned from the association in 1968 to focus on promoting
emerging artists and his gallery.

Schmela's new gallery building, designed by the Dutch architect Aldo van Eyck, opened in September 1971. The distinguished
new space, located near the Kunsthalle, opened with the Beuys show Barraque d'Ull Odde 1961-1967, and became one of the first
galleries in Germany to exhibit the "new" Americans Gordon Matta-Clark in 1977 and Bruce Nauman in 1979. In the mid-1970s,
Schmela began showing large sculpture and multimedia installations by artists such as Bernhard Luginbuehl, Richard Serra,
and Claes Oldenburg at the Lantz'sche Villa and Park, the Schmela family's new residence in Düsseldorf-Lohhausen. This project
was not fully realized due to Schmela's death in 1980.

The artists exhibited at Galerie Schmela searched for a new kind of art after the war and often worked in reaction to Art
Informel. Schmela played a pivotal role in the development of ZERO, a collaborative movement founded by Otto Piene and Heinz
Mack in Düsseldorf in the mid-1950s in opposition to Art Informel. In 1961 Günther Uecker joined the group, which eventually
incorporated the work of Yves Klein, Lucio Fontana, Piero Manzoni, Daniel Spoerri, and Jean Tinguely, among others. Schmela's
artists represented various, often overlapping tendencies such as kinetic art, performance, Happenings, Nouveau Réalisme,
the European form of Pop, and auto-destructive art, as well as having a general fascination with perception and technology.
Schmela was a personal friend of Joseph Beuys and a committed advocate of his art. Galerie Schmela was the site of Beuys's
now famous action, How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare, on 26 November 1965. Also in 1965, Beuys participated in another
important exhibition at Galerie Schmela, Weiss-Weiss.

The gallery's annotated copy of the auction catalog
Schmela Auktion 1, a portfolio of prints issued on the occasion of the 1967 Kunstmarkt in Cologne, a sound recording of a discussion which
took place at the opening of Galerie Schmela's inaugural 1957 exhibition of Yves Klein's Yves Propositions monochromes, and
approximately 50 monographs and periodical issues, including several artists' books, are cataloged separately but form part
of the archive. Their individual records can be searched under the Accession no. 2007.M.17.

Administrative Information

Access

Open for use by qualified researchers, except unreformatted audiovisual materials.

The archive was initially processed by Laura Schroffel, who also created a preliminary finding aid. Isabella Zuralski further
processed the archive, created the final series arrangement, and completed writing the finding aid in June 2011. The biographical/historical
note was adapted from text by JoAnne Paradise.

Separated Materials

Several periodical issues and monographs, including two rare publications on Joseph Beuys, were transferred to the Getty Research
Library for individual cataloging and can be found by searching the library catalog for Galerie Schmela Collection.

Scope and Content of Collection

The Galerie Schmela records reveal the work of a passionate art dealer focused on seeking out and promoting new and innovative
artists emerging in the changing social, political, and cultural landscapes in postwar Europe and the United States. The archive
documents the gallery's business under Alfred Schmela's direction from the inaugural show in 1957 until his death in 1980,
as well as the continuation of the gallery by Schmela's widow and daughter during the 1990s, with a few items dated to 2006.

In Series II are the particularly extensive files Schmela developed on some of the artists with whom he worked. The Joseph
Beuys files contain ephemera, press clippings, typescripts, printed matter by various authors and institutions concerning
his artistic practice, teaching, and political activism, and correspondence including the gallery's exchanges with Beuys's
estate and family, and with clients. The files on Yves Klein and ZERO include correspondence, ephemera, typescripts, extensive
press coverage. The Klein file also contains a recording of the opening of his first solo show at Galerie Schmela in 1957,
labeled "Diskussion anlässlich der Ausstellungseröffnung Yves propositions monochromes."

Series III contains several hundred vintage photographs of openings, performances, artists installing their shows, visitors,
collectors, installations, individual artwork, and Alfred Schmela himself and his family.

A small series of materials concerns Alfred Schmela's first auction, held on the premises of Künstlerverein Malkasten in Düsseldorf
on 15 June 1963, and another small series contains business records and ledgers.

A sizable collection of ephemera in Series VI consists of small catalogs, invitations, a few artists' books, and numerous
posters documenting exhibitions of a vast number of artists, mostly contemporary, from Europe and North America.

In Series VII press clippings from the mid-1950s to late-1990s, primarily from local daily newspapers, include reviews of
exhibitions held at Galerie Schmela and elsewhere in Germany and abroad, articles about current trends in contemporary art,
art criticism, the politics of art, Alfred Schmela, individual artists, collectors, museum curators, art dealers, various
art institutions, and the Kölner Kunstmarkt.